


The Heart Heals with Time

by KasainoKage



Category: One Piece
Genre: Canon-Typical Violence, Gen, How Do I Tag, It's the Donquixote Family, Kids in the care of the Donquixote Family, Other Additional Tags to Be Added, Past Character Death, Prostitution, Rosinante is still dead, Trauma, What Did You Expect
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-06-23
Updated: 2019-06-23
Packaged: 2020-05-18 08:16:01
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,750
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19330657
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/KasainoKage/pseuds/KasainoKage
Summary: Donquixote Doflamingo: Joker, Shichibukai, the Heavenly Demon, King of Dressrosa. He had many titles, although he hadn't earned them yet. Rosie never expected she'd give him another. But then again, she'd never expected to be born into The Family either.





	The Heart Heals with Time

**Author's Note:**

> Astra Inclinant by RememberThePetrichor has given me sort-of-positive Doflamingo feelings, which is not something I ever expected to experience. Those feelings have somehow spawned this.

Doflamingo had sequestered himself away in the lower levels of his ship. His study on the upper deck was noisy as they sailed towards a storm. They’d been at sea for two nights and he was sick of hearing the adults in the Family argue as the kids played in the rain. The storage rooms would give him peace for at least sometime. Kicking his feet onto the coffee table, Doflamingo leaned back into the lounge to continue reading reports.

He got through two pages before he was disturbed by the light pattering of feet. A small body backed through the barely open door and closed it gently, hands coming up to cover the bottom of their face as they turned around. Doflamingo supposed the toddler had been laughing before it saw him, clearly unexpected. The hands dropped from their face to their chest, eyes wide and mouth shaped in an unspoken ‘oh’. He recognised the child, even if he hadn’t seen it since a week after its birth. It was easy to see the resemblance. He scowled at the reminder.

“Girl,” he said, curling and uncurling his fingers, gesturing her to approach. She obeyed quickly, little feet moving swiftly across to floor with her arms held out for balance.

She was small. The top of her head didn’t reach over the arm of the lounge, her blonde curls falling back as she craned her neck to look at him. He remembered his brother at this age. Rosinante’s hair had been curly before it grew long enough to style in the Celestial Dragon fashion. The curls had relaxed as they’d aged. He wondered if this girl’s ringlets would do the same.

His brother’s red-brown eyes watched him, the girl shifting from foot to foot nervously, her hands gripping and releasing the hem of her shirt, but never looking away. He looked at her face, down to her moving feet, up to her hands, and back to her face.

“What are you doing?” he asked.

“Ex-ploring,” she said, carefully pronouncing the first syllable.

Not quite the question he was asking. He might come back to that later.

“Why are you nervous?”

Her brow creased and her face scrunched a little. Was she old enough to understand the question? What did kids know by two and a half? This was why he didn’t normally take young children, even if they were easier to mould. Training them to operate before he could train them to be useful was more effort than it was worth. He watched her for a few moments more before she settled on an answer.

“Scary,” she said finally, looking at him warily. “You’re scary. Danger.”

Oh? Now that was interesting. Both what she said and how she was acting. He wondered if she knew who he was. He asked and fought the need to grin.

“Doflamingo,” she replied immediately. “Young master,” she sounded out slower, making sure to get the pronunciation correct again.

He hummed a little. He’d made a point of avoiding reminders of Corazon, so he was fairly certain she’d never seen him before. She must have been educated by her mother and the other whores to know him on sight and his title amongst the family. But she’d clearly spent time with the cannon fodder and their stories to know his name and that he was dangerous to those he didn’t claim. She hurt to look at, but this girl was his. Born into his family. Born sharing his blood.

“Do you know what we are?” he asked.

She shook her head, little blond curls waving with the motion.

“We’re family,” he said. “I named you, Rosina. You are mine. And so long as you don’t betray me, I am not a threat to you.”

The girl scrunched her face again and tilted her head to the side. He probably used too many words. He left it at that and went back to his reports. Slowly the girl moved away from his chair to the bookshelf. He looked over the top of his pages to watch. She grabbed a thin book and container of pencils from the bottom shelf. Could she write already? But no, she opened the book and it was full of little drawings. He flicked his eyes around the room from corner to corner. There were other items in easy reach for her height, and loose sheets of paper with drawings lined along a wall. Clearly, she’d decided this storeroom was her work room.

Doflamingo had finished one report and started on the next when he felt a pulling against his pants. He looked down. Rosina had his pant leg gripped in one hand and the notebook in the other. She wasn’t looking at him.

“I made you a picture,” she said softly, her face still pointed down and scuffing her shoe on the floorboards. “Can I show you?”

He drew in a breath and closed his eyes. Such a different stance to earlier. Weak. Minding toddlers was not something he had practice in despite this child not being the first. Giolla normally took care of Dellinger, was there to hand him off to if he got too loud or too much. Rosina’s mother was somewhere on the ship and could deal with this. But Doflamingo looked down again, and the girl’s eyes were watching him with a watery sheen. Her shoulders drew up to her neck and she brought her hand back from his pants to pull the book to her chest. She looked like Rosi. Before they left Mariejois, the very few times mother scolded Rosi he would do the same thing with tears running down his face. Mother would fold and sweep him into a hug. Doffy had tried it once and not received the same reaction. And he hated his brother. But he loved him too. Maybe he had something in common with his soft, foolish mother after all.

He let the breath out slowly and reached down to the girl. She shrunk into herself further but didn’t step back. With his hand stretched out over her, Doflamingo was reminded again just how small she was. He could have easily gripped around her torso and lifted her up with one hand. Instead, he grabbed the back of her shirt like the scruff of a kitten and put her in the empty space next to him.

“Let’s see it then.”

Rosina’s face lit up, her smile bright and full of baby teeth. She flipped through pages in her book and shoved it into his lap when she found the right one. Doflamingo looked at the brightly coloured page. It was… he could at least recognise the shapes as people. A very tall person with a big pink spikey cloud behind them, and a very small person in a red dress. They both had yellow hair. The were some leaf shapes in the cloud, and the tall person had very pointy eyes. It was him and Rosina, even if he could only guess because of the colours and size difference.

Rosina was looking at him. He didn’t know what he was supposed to say. Would she cry if he told her she needed more practice?

“It’s me and Papa,” she said, and Doflamingo blanched.

He looked at the drawing again. It was definitely him and not Corazon. The cloud was his coat, and the leaves might have been feathers. But it was pink, not black. The pointy eyes were his glasses. And there were no hearts like what Baby always used to draw for Corazon. Rosina wouldn’t know about the hearts though. Corazon was never mentioned by the family anymore, and the heart seat was empty for when Law came back. Where would the girl have even seen a photo to know what Corazon looked like? Doflamingo’s thoughts stuttered. There were no photos of Corazon. No one talked about Corazon. Rosina had no idea that Corazon had existed at all.

Papa. The girl thought he was her father.

“I’m not Papa,” he said. That had to be corrected. He _needed_ to correct it. He didn’t know why. Couldn’t process the rapid flick-flick-flick of one thought to the next. His breathing sounded louder in his ears.

The girl’s head tilted to the side. “Not Papa?”

The girl was confused. Rosina. Rosina was confused. He hated his brother. He _hated_ him. Corazon—Rosinante—had betrayed him. Reunited with him just to spy for the Marines. His chest was too tight and too hollow.

“No. I’m your uncle. My brother was your father.”

“Papa’s not here?”

Her voice was getting drowned out by the blood thud-thudding through his head. He shot him. Doflamingo shot him for what he did. And he’d deserved it. Because Doffy had _loved_ Corazon. Loved Rosinante. More than anyone. And that betrayal had hurt even worse than his father’s.

“He’s dead.”

He hated his brother. He didn’t want any reminders. He’d thrown Trebol across the deck when the man suggested throwing the newborn into the sea. The girl could stay with the mother, raised with the whores to become another trader; pleasure for information. He didn’t need to interact with her. Knew he'd feel the pain from loss if he even looked at the reminder his brother. He couldn’t kill her though.

“I killed him.”

Corazon. _Rosinante_. He’d named this girl because he loved his brother. Told himself he’d forgiven the betrayals with death. Rosina had blood of the Celestial Dragons in her veins. She could do more than gather information. He loved his brother. And he hated his brother. But the sins of the father should not be the sins of the child. He unjustly bore the sins of his father’s decision. Chichi-ue.

Rosina curled away from him. She was creating space between them. Frightened. His hands had clenched into fists and torn holes through the thin pages of her drawing book. Rosi had been frightened of him. So frightened he’d run to the _Marines_. He let it go. Reached over with both hands and pulled Rosina to him.

“Chichi-ue,” he said. “You can call me Chichi-ue. Because you are mine. My family. My blood.”

She would be more than her mother, and better than her father. And she was his. Corazon had betrayed him, but he’d left behind a gift for Doffy anyway. Someone who could be to Doffy what blood family should be. He’d have to thank his brother if he ever saw in the next world.

**Author's Note:**

> I am so late to this fandom it isn't funny. Read fics of it for years without actually getting past Skypeia. And then I powered through the rest of the manga in like, a week, and binged through most of Punk Hazard and Dressrosa because Law is just flat out my favourite character. To the point I'm translating the novels and Dressrosa myself to get a better feel for the characters. Some of that information may or may not work itself into this depending on how far I get.  
> Also, suggestions of tags would be great. I actually have no idea.
> 
> P.S. I headcannon that there are multiple languages in the OP world including a predominate trade/common language. Celestial Dragons have their own language (which in canon they sort of do, they use archaic and really really formal forms as address for family ie: chichi-ue-sama. Flevance is/was West Germanic based on Law's use of Mes and Takt, and Sanji has picked up French from _somewhere_ )  
> If you happen to like One Piece multi-language stuff, go read The Trouble with Eastern by teaandtumblr. It's in my bookmarks.


End file.
